If you enjoyed Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People (or if you wanted to but never got around to it), this post goes out to you.

A long time ago, Christmas 1996 or 97, my parents got me a very unusual PC game as a gift. They didn't even know what it was, my Dad just said the guy at the store told him it was good. I turned it on and experienced my first ever point-and-click adventure game, The Neverhood.

This games visuals were quite unusual...everything is made out of clay. The music is even more bizarre, but you'd probably have to head over to youtube to check it out yourself.

Back in the 90s there were a lot of these adventure games: Sam And Max, Monkey Island, The Dig, Indiana Jones (these were all made by LucasArts, they rather dominated the genre at the time). Even Blizzard was making a Warcraft one called Warcraft Adventures: Lord Of The Clans, but they canceled it and made it into a book instead. You can actually find the leaked alpha of the Blizzard game but I heard it's awful.

However, The Neverhood stood out. Not just because of it's weird clay visuals and unique music, but also because of the gameplay. Other adventure games focused too heavily on managing your inventory and figuring out what item to use where, resulting in players just mindlessly trying every item in every situation until something worked. The Neverhood focused on requiring players to solve puzzles to move forward instead. Successful modern adventure games like Professor Layton follow this model.

Many years passed and no true sequel was ever created. A playstation game called Skullmonkeys continues the story, but as a platform jumping game, not a puzzle-solving adventure game. The main redeeming factor in Skullmonkeys was that the music was once again excellent and also really, REALLY weird.

I had very long ago given up hope of ever seeing another claymation adventure from these guys, and then a couple of weeks ago...

Armikrog. A new game, done in the same style as The Neverhood, by the same team of people. The odds of seeing these guys get back together 17 years after The Neverhood had seemed to be approximately 0. And yet here it was, a full intro cutscene with the whole team, including the soundtrack guy Terry S Taylor. He even had the first song completed and released as a preview to get the fans psyched up.

I mean, to put things in perspective, you guys would all be pretty blown away if TBC got together and churned out sbemail 206, wouldn't you? And it's only been 1.5 years since they tweeted that they would create it someday, and only 2.5 years since their Holiday 2010 toon. Imagine if TBC disappeared for well over a decade and then came back out of nowhere with new toons, and you might imagine the level this is on.

So this is just super-de-duper exciting for me, and I felt like gushing about it, so there you have it.

The project isn't a done deal yet. It's on kickstarter, and needs support, but it looks like it can reach the goal though it will be close. Kickstarters that are under their goal usually see a massive influx of new and increased pledges in the final few days, and based on the pattern of many other similar kickstarter projects, Armikrog is poised to make a successful finish.

The way kickstarter works, there is nothing to lose and everything to gain - you can make a pledge to preorder the game and it is only charged if the entire funding goal is met by the deadline, otherwise no one pays a cent. If you're thinking about it, thanks!